Tuesday, April 28, 2009

The Auction House for Dummies

As we all know, there is an Auction House in WoW. It is the best place to make money. It is also where some of the dummies ruin it for the rest of us. I am going to go over a few helpful tips to help you not be one of these dummies.

Install Auctioneer: Seriously. There is not reason not to have this. Ever. Auctioneer is probably the single best addon for manipulating the AH. It practically does all of the work for you.

The first thing you will need to do after installation is scan. The scan take all of the prices of all of the items on the AH and saves them. You will want to do this at least once a day and preferably twice a day for the first week. This will help weed out the harmful for noob auctions such as the spring water that was 1000 gold for 2 days and then 50 gold after that. That is not a deal. That is people messing with your scans.

The easiest way to scan with the new version of auctioneer is the little blue fast forward button on top of the AH screen. You used to have to type /aadvgetall. Now you just click the pretty blue button. And click it again when it says to click it again.

Look for Deals: There are many different kinds of deals you can look for. There are several Auctioneer options where you can set parameters for what you are looking for. You can set up a snatch, which will buy the item you specify at or below the prices you specify automatically. You can also search for items that will sell for a profit to the vendor. Yes, there are some dummies that put items up for less than the vendor price.

If you are low on cash, I would recommend looking at the safe bets. Usually in the form of herbs and ore. Auctioneer will give you a percentage. This percentage is the percent of the actual market price the item is going for. You want to look mainly at blue percentages which means someone put it up for less that 50 percent of market price. Buy these items and resell them.

Post Your Auctions: Dont be "that guy". You are trying to maximize your profit. If you see that there are several stacks of saronite ore on the AH for 20 gold a stack, dont post your 20 stacks at 10 gold a stack. Sure you will sell, but the dummies will come out of the woodword. You flooded the market with low price materials which causes the other impatient people to undercut you. Before you know it, Saronite is going for 5 gold a stack and you have lost a money making possibility.

Only post a few of each thing at a time to avoid flooding the market. If the prices are way down, hold onto it for a bit. If there are only a few at the ridiculous low price, buy them out and repost them at your price. Notice I said a few. This leads me to my next bullet.

Avoid Trying to Create a Monopoly: It is OK to find you nich market. There are little markets out there that can make you a nice chunk of gold with little competition. Dont try to monopolize any large markets. You will only get burned. A market is usually large for a reason. There is profit to be had. Say you want to corner a part of the enchanting market and buy out all of the high level dust. You buy out all of the dust and repost it for 4 times the market amount. The smart businessmen undercut you by half. They know one of two things will happen. People will buy at their price first, or you will buy at their price to hold your monopoly. Your items will not sell and you will be broke.

Remember, despite this being a Blizzard game, Zerging does not work when it comes to AH effectiveness.

13 comments:

For the past two weeks Saronite Ore on my server was at 12g/stack. I nearly tore my hair out in frustration, but I've waited it out and yesterday it was up to 17g/stack again. Maybe another week will see it at 20g/stack where it should be.

I have auctioneer but never learned any of the advanced features. Perhaps you can post (or link) a quick tutorial on how to setup those "snatching" auctions at a given price, or look for items that would sell to a vendor for profit?

I wonder if some people flood the market because they don't know how to set auctioneer properly. The default is to post every stack of every item. This can be a big waste of money if it's not an item that moves well.

The other beginner tip I would add is to reduce the post time from 48H to 24 (or even 12). This will save money on the deposit and give you a chance to repost sooner, should someone decide to undercut you.

This blog post needs to be put in the main log-in screen on WoW for every new-to-the-game dude. It should be a mandatory read!

On Shattered Halls, the AH is in ruins. There seem to be too many of "those guys" who will sell anything for less than the other lowest person, no matter what. There's almost no market for gems, I've sold only 1 Titanium ring in the past 2 weeks (previously sold 1 per day on another server) and odd mats (dragon's eye, orbs) go for too much. It's obviously due to easy material saturation, contrasting with the harder-to-obtain materials being sold for much more than they are worth, globally.

Just frustrating. Waiting for it to correct itself, but getting low on patience.

Nothing irritates me more than Auctioneer retards. No, I'm not generalizing about all who use it - only the ones blindly apply massive undercuts on top of other retards' massive undercuts to the point where the prices are stupidly depressed (i.e. have no clue about Auctioneer or basic economics).

Tnotakuguy is borderline in my book - ore currently selling at 6g at stack, so he lists at 5g or 5.50g. Why not 5.95g? Or 5.99g? Either way, you would be the low price on the block. But instead, the Auctiontards pick up his underpriced listings, incorporate the data, and they blindly list based on this new "market value".

I remember my first character, trying to level leatherworking. I spent nearly every coin I had trying to keep up with patterns I could use at my own levels.

Now, with gold so easy to come by at high levels, prices on even simple stuff like linen cloth and light leather are double what they used to be.

It makes me sad because it's taking the crafting skills away from new players. When new people ask in guild what professions they should take, it's always suggested they take gathering skills because you actually make money, rather than struggling to level a crafting skill and being broke all the time.

Most of us understand that lower levels don't matter that much in the long run, but to new players, it's still magic. Every new level is an accomplishment. Each new pattern they learn is a potential upgrade.

So are my undercutting tactics making a difference? Probably not in the long run, but at least I can go to sleep at night with the warm cuddly feeling that I'm doing all I can to keep inflation in check.